17

Chappaqua, New York

Senator Gina Hayes held her first and only grandchild, the plush of the infant’s costume soft against her hands. Ten-month-old Tia was dressed as a ladybug and intent on capturing her own antennae, which bobbed just out of reach. One veered close enough to tickle the Senator’s nose. Hayes sneezed. Her grin was broad and easy. The photographer snapped several photos in a millisecond.

“Don’t sell those to the Enquirer,” Senator Hayes joked. In the next moment, the baby spit up on her suit. Hayes glanced down. “Now especially don’t sell those.”

Her daughter rushed in with a wet wipe. Together, they cleaned up the spot. The baby giggled. Senator Hayes held the infant a minute longer, nuzzling her neck, inhaling her sweet milk-and-honey scent. “Nothing better than the smell of babies.”

Her assistant was signaling her from the doorway. Gina Hayes had never had what could be called a normal life, not since her father had been elected fortieth president of the United States thirty-five years earlier, but at least she used to have stretches of hours alone with her family. She missed that since she’d declared her own run for the presidency. She handed her granddaughter back reluctantly, planting one last kiss on her plump, warm cheek.

“You’ll stay for dinner?” It was a plea more than a question. “Dad is grilling. Probably the last outdoor meal of the year.”

“Of course. Baby Tia and I wouldn’t miss handing out candy at the old homestead.”

Gina Hayes was caught off-guard by the wash of relief. She attributed it to the demands of her global schedule. She wasn’t seeing her family enough.

Numerous times on the campaign trail, she’d been asked why she was running for president. She delivered the canned answers—she was inspired by her father to a life of public service, it was a calling, she knew she could make a difference—but sometimes, a version of the truth leaked out: she was running for her daughter.

Catherine wasn’t beautiful, but she was smart and she was kind, and Gina Hayes was proud of her in the deepest marrow of her bones. When Hayes had found herself unmarried and unexpectedly pregnant three decades earlier, however, the future had not looked rosy. She’d thought about and dismissed the idea of an abortion. Instead, she chose single parenthood. Knowing she’d have two mouths to feed, she worked twice as hard to make partner at the law firm where she worked, putting in more hours and acquiring and winning more cases than any of her colleagues.

Not only didn’t she make partner, but she also discovered her salary was $20,000 less a year than the man who did. He’d been working there a year less than Hayes. She knew about his salary because he proposed to her after having known her only eight weeks, aware she was pregnant with another man’s child. The man moved fast.

She said yes, and she and Charles Hayes entered the world of politics together.

Her life wasn’t a straight trajectory from there, nothing worked that way, but she always kept close to her heart the fact that being born female was still a handicap in parts of this country.

She would change that for her daughter.

“See you outside?” Catherine pecked her mother’s cheek and disappeared through the French doors leading toward the manicured backyard, carrying the baby. The Secret Service detail stepped aside to let Catherine pass. Hayes’s lead bodyguard, Theodore, broke from the group of men to stand nearer Hayes.

Gina Hayes watched her daughter and granddaughter through the floor-to-ceiling windows. It had been an unusually warm fall. Still, most of the leaves had given up the ghost in a windstorm last week. All that was left were trunks with branches like skeleton hands rising out of the ground. Clouds obscured the afternoon sun and backlit the landscape like a daguerreotype photograph.

Perfect for Halloween, Senator Hayes thought, inhaling woodsmoke and the melancholy of fall before stepping into her study. She loved this time of year in Upstate New York.

“You look tired.” Matthew Clemens had been her assistant since her days as a district court judge. He served as her memory and, some days, as her sanity.

“That’s because I am,” she responded cheerfully, letting Theodore close the door behind them. The muscled, suited man never let her out of his sight except to use the restroom, and even then, he waited outside the bathroom door. “What’s the latest?”

Matthew glanced at his iPad. “You’re ahead in the polls. Four points. It doesn’t hurt that Americans are growing fond of healthcare.”

Championing universal health care and uniting the Senate vote behind it made the US one of the last but not the last developed countries to provide health care to all of its citizens. It had also painted a bright bull’s-eye on Senator Gina Hayes’s back for her entire legislative career. Now it seemed the tides were turning. She’d been in the game too long to be surprised.

Matthew continued. “Other than that, Israel peace talks are in the shitter, Afghanistan is a morass, Syria’s on fire, and we’re running out of oil. Oh, and the media doesn’t think the world is ready for a female president of the United States.”

Gina Hayes stepped to the window, watching her husband and daughter play with Tia. She appreciated Matthew’s attempts at humor, even if he usually missed the mark. He reminded her of Stephen Stucker’s Johnny in Airplane.

Johnny, what can you make out of this?

This? Why, I can make a hat or a brooch or a pterodactyl …

“So, nothing new, then?” she asked.

“Just one thing.” Matthew’s tone was serious enough to make her turn. “The Secret Service wants to up your security detail. With the election eight days away, there is a whole new wash of threats rolling in.”

Theodore, who must have had at least one ancestor who was a statue, made no sound.

Hayes nodded.

“That’s it?” Matthew asked. “You don’t want to know about any of the threats? No specifics on the gun-toting loonies who are scrabbling to make history? Not even a peek at the wackadoodle plans to annihilate the ball-crushing she-bitch with the audacity to run for ruler of the Free World?”

Hayes peeked again at her family. Charles was scrubbing the grill’s metal grate, and she could almost smell tonight’s dill-marinated salmon that was his specialty. Nearby, Tia was clutching her mom’s fingers and trying to stand, her black ladybug antennae bouncing in the breeze. Charles turned to laugh at their antics. He’d raised Senator Hayes’s daughter as his own.

She turned back to Matthew, smiling softly at his kind, round face. “I can either walk through life looking over my shoulder, or I can do my damn job. It’s an easy choice when you look at it that way, don’t you think?”